#3 We’re not creating something new from scratch?! About the vision of the issues Inc.

Opening

Hello everyone, good evening. This is “すたぽり”, a startup x policy making Podcast. This podcast is brought to you by myself, Tatsunori Hirota, founder of issues, Inc. which is working on a policy making digital transformation. This time I am recording on January 15, 2023.

Listener’s Voice

Let me start by introducing the listener’s voice again this time. I received a message from my friend, Ms. S.

Hi, now you have started a podcast!! I was impressed by how quickly you moved from your talk at the “Social Lens Radio” year-end party live streaming. I didn’t figured out the meaning of your 108 proposal roses. I googled it and found that “108 = eternity”! That’s wonderful. I look forward to listening more!

Thanks for your message! “Social Lens Radio” is a podcast by two friends of mine that explains social issues. At the end of last year, I participated in a live-streaming project called the Social Lens Radio Year-End Party, where the two personalities and their friends hang out for Zoom drinks. I had been interested in podcasting for a long time because I had heard both of them talk about it, and I asked them for some advice at the year-end party. I decided to take on a new challenge in the New Year, and launched “すたぽりi” during the New Year’s holiday season.

In the previous episode #2, I mentioned that I proposed to my wife by giving her a bouquet of 108 roses. Originally, I was going to propose to her with a diamond engagement ring in a box. However, I felt that we would both be sad if the ring didn’t match her preference, so I thought that we could go make the ring together and give her something that would look nice on the day of the proposal. I did some research and came up with the idea of a bouquet of 108 roses. In fact, 108 roses was a huge bouquet, and it was a great memory. In fact, after I proposed, my wife said to me, “108 is the number of 煩悩 (Japanese traditional concept people have 108 trouble minds)?” I was so overwhelmed that I couldn’t even think of what to say to her. Well, it is a good memory now.

I would be very happy if you could send me these kinds of comments, as it would be a good motivation for me to keep doing the podcast. Now, let’s get down to business.

Creating infrastructure to solve various social issues through digital transformation of policy making process

I’m going to talk about “#3 We’re not creating something new from scratch?! About the vision of the issues Inc.

When I explain the vision of the company I talk about “creating infrastructure to solve various social issues through digital transformation of policy making”. Actually, this is not our official statement as a team. We will be creating what we call “Vision, Mission, and Values” in the future, so this is just my personal thoughts, but I would like to briefly introduce them to you.

As I mentioned in the previous episode, the idea for founding issues came up from an anonymous blog called “保育園落ちた日本死ね”. Nowadays, things have improved considerably, partly due to the Covid-19, but this issue of 待機児童問題 is also an issue that has not been resolved for over 20 years. One of the reasons for this is that the infrastructure of policy making has weakened considerably with the changing times. The role of “issues” is to rebuild and supplement this infrastructure on the Internet.

For example, decades ago, most local residents, including mothers raising children, participated in neighborhood associations. When mothers are facing some kind of trouble, the ask for help in that community. Then local council members would be in the community and ,”OK I’m handling it!!”. Then half or a year later, a policy package that solves the problem is created, and the councilor tells the mother about it in person at the neighborhood association. I wonder if this kind of thing used to happen here and there. So to speak, this neighborhood association was responsible for everything from identifying policy needs to communicating the policies that were created based on those needs to the residents and getting them to use them.

The technical term for these neighborhood associations is “intermediary organizations,” and they come in many other forms, including neighborhood associations, community associations, industry associations, and labor unions. However, the percentage of people in their 20s to 40s who have access to these intermediary organizations has dropped drastically. For example, the labor union organizing rate was about 35% during the period of high economic growth, but according to a 2020 survey by the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, the rate has been cut in half to 17.1%. In fact, almost none of my friends of my generation participate in the activities of these intermediate organizations on a daily basis. Therefore, they think that the government does not look toward them anyway and that politics is something that has nothing to do with them. I think this is why the voter turnout is so low.

I still think that this requires a new infrastructure that suits the new lifestyle of the new generation. We issues are trying to create this and complement the existing intermediary organizations. We use smartphones to catch policy needs and provide feedback to the government in an appropriate form. Then, we will use smartphones to inform the government of the policies they have made, optimizing them individually.

As I mentioned in #2, the impetus for founding issues came from a story about the ”保育園落ちた日本死ね”. However, I believe that my wife and I will face challenges at every stage of our lives that cannot be solved by market principles alone. For example, starting from pregnancy and childbirth, children’s advancement to nursery school, elementary school, junior high school, high school, and university. Or if they buy a house, they may become interested in the living environment and community development. Beyond that, we may face issues such as nursing care and medical care for our parents or ourselves. I would like to create an infrastructure that can solve such various issues through policy-making DX.

How to Deal with Silver Democracy

I also have some other personal thoughts. One is “how to deal with silver democracy,” or in other words, what role can issues play in reflecting the voices of the younger generation, who have become accustomed to the Internet, in policy making. For example, the Japanese government has recently been talking about doubling the budget for child-raising, and I imagine that young people will support this through issues so that the government can really accomplish this.

In fact, I think there are probably almost no people in our generation who think they can live on a pension in their old age. There are many elite people around me who are planning to escape overseas, and I think that those who are not in this situation have a really vague sense of hopelessness about the future.

In order to turn this situation upside down, we need to create a situation where two parents produce two children, and the population pyramid should be made into a dimensional shape when viewed in 100-year increments. When I say “silver democracy,” it sounds like I am stirring up intergenerational conflict, but in fact I think this is exactly what we need to do to brighten the outlook of the social security system and eliminate uncertainty about the future for the elderly.

In fact, many politicians also strongly want to do this. However, when I jumped into the field of elections, I could understand the actual situation that makes it difficult. In fact, when I started issues, I went to about 20 candidates’ election teams every day as a volunteer in order to study the realities of the election scene. I was constantly handing out flyers and riding in a campaign car, saying things like, “Please cast a clean vote”. I noticed that the child-raising generation did not really accept the flyers, and even if they did, they would throw them away right in front of me. On the other hand, the elderly people accepted the flyers more and more, and some even came to shake the candidate’s hand and said, “Good luck, you guys, we’re rooting for you!”. Politicians are human beings, so I think it is inevitable that they would want to prioritize policies for those who support them.

In fact, when talking about this kind of silver democracy, simple generational population numbers are often the topic of conversation. But actually, strategic communication is by far the most impactful.

This may be a strange example, but if you look at the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity, which is a hot topic right now, the number of believers is actually only about 600,000. Although the number of their own votes is limited, they have a great impact on policy making by communicating strategically with politicians.

Although the younger generation today is smaller in number than the older generation, there are still tens of millions of people in their 20s to 40s. If these people can use issues to communicate strategically and unconsciously with politics, I believe it will have a much greater impact on policy making.

In fact, something similar is already happening in issues, albeit on a smaller scale. Local council members, who previously had almost only had contact with the elderly through face-to-face meetings in the local community, are now able to have contact with the child-raising generation through issues. This has led to a tremendous change in behavior, as they are now able to push forward with policies that support child-raising. I am very excited about the tremendous impact that this scale of change will have if it continues to grow.

manabo’s Revenge

Another personal thought I have is “manabo’s Revenge”. As I mentioned in #2, my first career was co-founding an education startup company called manabo Inc. I founded the company as a shareholder and director upon graduating from university, and worked there for about five years. There were many ups and downs and many hardships, but in the end, the company was sold to the Sundai Prep School group, and as an entrepreneur, I was able to have a happy exit. However, I was not able to achieve my initial goal of creating a huge business that would truly turn the society upside down. Personally, this was very frustrating, and I would like to somehow get back at it in this issues Inc.

Closing

Up to this point, we have been talking about “#3: We are not creating something new from scratch?!About Vision”. Decades ago, the understanding of policy needs by intermediary organizations and the delivery of created policies worked well, but they have been weakened with the changing times. I have talked about how we issues are not creating something new from scratch, but that we are the ones who are restructuring and complementing these intermediary organizations.

If you thought it was interesting, I would appreciate it if you could follow this channel. We are also looking for your impressions and topics you would like me to cover in four ways: 1) Post on Twitter with the hashtag #すたぽり, 2) Voice message on Anchor, 3) Letter function on stand.fm, and 4) Facebook Messenger for my friends. We will introduce them in the “Listener’s Voice” section at the beginning of this podcast. Well, that’s all for now, thank you all very much!